Belle Wong: writer, reader, creativity junkie

The Read List: The Memory Painter, by Gwendolyn Womack

Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist, whose paintings have dazzled the world. But there’s a secret to Bryan’s success: Every canvas is inspired by an unusually vivid dream. Bryan believes these dreams are really recollections?possibly even flashback from another life?and he has always hoped that his art will lead him to an answer. And when he meets Linz Jacobs, a neurogenticist who recognizes a recurring childhood nightmare in one Bryan’s paintings, he is convinced she holds the key.

Their meeting triggers Bryan’s most powerful dream yet?visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer’s, died in a lab explosion decades ago. As his visions intensify, Bryan and Linz start to discern a pattern. But a deadly enemy watches their every move, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that the past stays buried.

It’s time travel. Or reincarnation. Or both. I vote for both, because it feels like time travel but I guess it’s really about reincarnation. (The subtitle is kind of a giveaway: “A novel of love and reincarnation”.)

It had me riveted right from the very beginning. And once this book got its claws into me, it didn’t let go. Highly readable, but with great pacing. Little by little, things are revealed to us, but with perfect timing.

It all made sense. Very credible. I could see this actually happening (well, okay, maybe not really happening, but you know what I mean. Suspension of disbelief? Not difficult at all.)

I won’t go all spoilerish, but I’ll say this: there was a point where I was like, “Hey, why does Bryan get all the juicy reincarnations?” And then the ending hit, and I was like, “Yay, Linz!”

And that ending? Really good. Great twist.

Did I just say twists? This book has such an interesting, complex plot. So really, lots of twists. Without making you lose that suspension of disbelief. Riveting is the word that comes to mind (yes, I know I’ve already used it. Because it fits.).

I’m looking forward to the sequel. Because there’s definitely going to be a sequel. But–and I am very grateful for this–NOT because this ends on a cliffhanger. No cliffhanger, but lots of promise to come. I love books that end like this.

If you like thrillers, if you like time travel, if you like a good read … grab a copy of The Memory Painter. You won’t regret it.

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I'm a writer, avid reader, artist-at-heart & book indexer. I blog about writing, books, art, creativity, spirituality, & the power of the imagination. Oh, and I like to write stuff about life in general, too!

"If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot." - Stephen King

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The purpose of being a serious writer is not to express oneself, and it is not to make something beautiful, though one might do those things anyway. Those things are beside the point. The purpose of being a serious writer is to keep people from despair. If you keep that in mind always, the wish to make something beautiful or smart looks slight and vain in comparison. If people read your work and, as a result, choose life, then you are doing your job.

“I didn’t write my books for posterity (not that posterity would have cared): I wrote them for myself. Which doesn’t mean I didn’t hunger for readers and fame. I never could have endured so much hard, solitary labor without the prospect of an audience. But this graveyard of dead books doesn’t unnerve me. It reminds me that I had a deeper motive, one that only the approach of old age and death has unlocked. I wrote to answer questions I had — the motive of all art, whatever its ostensible subject. There were things I urgently needed to know. ” James Atlas

“It’s the simple, inspiring idea that when members of different groups — even groups that historically dislike one another — interact in meaningful ways, trust and compassion bloom naturally as a result, and prejudice falls by the wayside.”

“We need to understand how refugees are different so that we don’t erase the specificity of their experience.”

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